Santa seems to have been hitting the bottle following The Battle of the Big Hairy Builders last week. Celebrations are such he’s forgotten Christmas 2023 is just around the corner.

Fear not! We’re sure your presents will be underway soon. It’s a terrific sign he’s hired a janitor to get all the recent carnage cleared up. You can now rest assured you’ll get your Barbie doll come Christmas Day!

Hiring a Janitor

With all the debris after The Battle of the Big Hairy Builders, and with those bastards now gone for good, I figured it was time to hire a janitor.

The one I had flown out for interview is a mass murderer at large who goes by the name of Dave. I don’t think that’s his real name because his CV and documents are obvious forgeries. He explained to me he’s looking for somewhere to, “Lay low and just work hard without killing nobody. Honest, I don’t wanna do no one no harm to no one no more.”

His sincerity impressed Santa.

Most interviewees surface act their way into roles, but Dave was dribbling noticeably and burst into tears thrice. He was also edgy, shaky, and prone to stuttering outbursts. On his CV/résumé thing, which was blood-spattered, it states:

“i is a hard worker who is skilled with many tasks including unclogging toilets, clogging toilets, clogging and unclogging toilets at the same time and i has 10 year of experience using an mop to mop things like puke, human crap and for self-defence purposes”

I said aloud, “This young man will go far!” Then I sneezed violently and got gunk all over his CV, which I handed back to him and he held the paper at an odd angle to not get Santa snot on his fingers.

Dave started his job the very next morning.

He immediately tried to go on an insane killing spree with his mop and bucket. I put that down to first day nerves. No harm done! I got Kenneth the walrus and Rudolph to pin him down to the ground.

Kenneth in the end just sat on top of him braying wildly until Dave had calmed down and promised us to behave himself.

But I still needed to give Dave a dressing-down in my office. He walked in looking sheepish as all hell.

“Dave the janitor, you’re here for a dressing-down. IS THAT CLEAR!?”

He was delighted. I couldn’t understand why he was so pleased about all of this as it was supposed to be a kind of boss type interrogation to put the bastard in his place, but the stupid git was beaming from ear to ear.

“What are you so happy about?!”

“I’m just looking forward to getting a dressing gown!”

My jaw hit the bloody floor. Wheezing, I sat back in my Santa chair and opened a secret drawer in my table, yanked out the bottle of absinthe, and slugged hard and long from it. Santa then informed Dave he wasn’t getting a dressing gown. Instead, he was getting a verbal warning for his conduct.

Dave was very displeased by this development.

Stamping his feet and screaming obscenities, he rushed up and grabbed hold of my Santa hat, ripped it off my head, threw it on the flew, and jumped up and down on it while yelling it was “stupid” and I (Santa) was also “stupid”.

I got Nurse Doreen into the office and she gave him several injections of midazolam, which calmed him down and made his limbs go all wobbly.

“Now, janitor, go and mop the floors!” I barked.

He got hold of the mop and bucket and ambled off from left to right, clattering off walls and spilling bucket juice onto the floor. With his numbed arms he then tried mopping the floor outside my office, tipped the bucket over, slipped on the bucket juice, and fell flat on his arse.

There he lay sprawled out, thrashing around, and mewling in distress. I shut the office door and left him to it.

Santa’s Upside Down Meeting With Markus (my head elf), Kenneth, and Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer

Santa started drinking heavily the moment after that door shut.

Later that day, after a long period spent idling while furiously bellowing into free air while drunk, Santa called Markus into my office. He’s my head elf. The goal of the meeting ahead was to establish where Christmas 2023 is up to.

Kenneth the walrus gaffer and Rudolph (out of it on drugs again) tagged along.

My production quota was still at 0% with not a single toy developed as of yet, primarily as I’ve been off galivanting around engaging cowboy builders in lessons of professionalism.

“Markus?”

“Yes, sir?”

“How are you?”

“… I’m sorry, sir?”

“How are you?”

Markus stood there with his mouth open. I was well aware I’d never asked him that before, but this was a deliberately (and wildly cunning) tactic to throw him off his guard. He didn’t know how to respond to I moved on to the others.

“How are you, Kenneth?”

He let rip with a massive, gurgling, monstrous walrus bray that droned on and on and on for about 13 seconds and threw out one of my ears. We all had our ears ringing after that one and there was a short silence while Kenneth chomped his huge mouth open and shut looking very self-satisfied. Smug git.

I turned to Rudolph to ask him how he was doing, but I could tell from the glacial expression in his eyes he was on a different planet at that point.

The purpose of the meeting was to get Christmas 2023 rolling.

But I was so drunk by that point I’d lost interest in things and, what with all the PTSD from the recent Bob’s Barmy Builders stuff, my genius mind was elsewhere.

So Santa did a handstand!

It took a hell of an effort. Just getting up was hard work. Santa heaved himself forward in jolly fashion, my enormous gut thundering down and punching me in the face, then I was up! A handstand! It last half a second then I cannoned into the ground and blacked out.

It’s All in a Day’s Work

Santa came to after Dave the janitor tipped the mop and bucket water over my head. I was strapped to a hospital bed in Nurse Doreen’s quarters and I could see that old crone and Markus, my head elf, sitting nearby nervously.

They’re worried about me, I thought.

I had a violent start and began bellowing, but the straps held true and I was stuck there with another concussion, as it turns out.

Dave left the medical ward while busting out some gangsta rap beats. I watched him with my best haughty expression. Then Markus came over and his elf gob opened and the noises began.

“Sir, the new janitor has been… causing some problems.”

“Nonsense! He’s a fine fellow!”

“Sir, you’ve been out cold for two days now. Without your supreme leadership the janitor has been taking some liberties around the factory.”

“Nonsense! He’s a fine fellow!”

“But sir, you don’t know what…”

“NONSENSE! HE’S A FINE FELLOW!” I bellowed again, triggering my gout-ridden ankles into a flare of pain. After I’d stopped screaming and cursing, Markus gave me a list of the things Dave had been up to. He’d been:

• Mass preparing the vast supply of instant noodles and tipping the contents down toilets to clog them.
• Chasing after elves (which he’d been calling “shelves” by mistake) with his mop and bucket to steal their spare change (he’d amassed a total of $1 so far).
• Arguing furiously with Nurse Doreen over our supply of Lemsips, which he enjoys the taste of and wants to drink many of.
• Drinking many of the Lemsips as he’d smashed his way into the medical ward and helped himself to the supplies.
• Off on a Lemsip bender after that and began hallucinating his mop and bucket were his “special friends” called Moppy and Bucky. This delusion persists as I type this and he’s actually quite set on marrying Moppy in a ceremony later today.
• Fascinated by the elves’ cesspit out back, which Dave has taken to doing lengths in as a morning exercise routine.
• Exhibiting numerous health ailments associated with his cesspit swimming antics, including one very bloodshot eye that looks like he’s inserted a red gobstopper into his face.
• Jabbering, gibbering, and making everyone around him nervous as he keeps laughing hysterically at nothing in particular.

Santa didn’t have any particular issue with the above. That was until Dave the janitor forced us all to attend his stupid bloody wedding with the mop.

The bucket was his best man.

We all indulged in this because the guy was clearly stir crazy and I just wanted him off my property. Santa was also strangely amused by it all.

Dave was in floods of tears throughout the ceremony, with Kenneth the walrus acting as vicar, and Dave pretended the bucket handed him the wedding ring (which was actually a tub of cheap margarine from the canteen fridge).

Worst of it was the “you may kiss the bride” bit and Dave tried to swallow the mop and, well, we all averted our gaze from that.

Nurse Doreen treated him in the clinic later for internal trauma.

Santa sacked his ass once he was out of the medical unit with a bandage on his forehead and hepped up on Lemsips. He took his firing with bad cheer, charging at Santa with his new bride and the bucket.

This is why I keep that walrus around. Dave was flattened by Kenneth, dragged out back, and left to find his own way back to civilization.

Janitor? If that’s what they’re all like then sod that! The Santa factory can have effluence dripping from the roof for all I care, it’s a preference over these bloody freeloaders!